If you are now wondering what this foursquare thing is all about, here’s the pitch. More info at http://foursquare.com/businesses/

Even though I don’t have a kindle, I have been reading ebooks since 2003. I get the pdf versions from ereader.com and back then I was reading them on a Palm V.  One of the first apps I installed on my new iPhone 3Gs recently was Barnes and Nobles ebook reader – for the fun of it. B&N’s weird, they won’t sell me the ebooks like Amazon but they won’t stop me from downloading the reader unlike Amazon.

I do know a way to download the Amazon reader and buy kindle books but it’s a tedious process. This regional restriction put in place by publishers is stupid. If physical books can be shipped anywhere by Amazon why can’t ebooks be sold as well? For the first time in Amazon’s history, they sold more ebooks than physical books this Christmas. Ebooks are the future. No, ebooks are here today.

Ebooks are great, they don’t take up anymore space on shelves in homes or at the bookstores. They don’t kill more trees. They don’t contribute to carbon footprint moving around from printer to distributor to retailers and finally to a reader. They cost less and save consumers more. They can meet consumer demands faster. They weigh nothing so you can carry a small library in your pocket. More copies of a book in digital form can be sold because it’s a personal copy once it’s purchased, I can’t really share an ebook as easily as I can a physical book. More sales, more money, everyone happy. No? The one bad thing I see with ebooks though is that I can’t get an author to autograph it. I’m sure someone somewhere is working on a solution where I can have a video of me kissing the author and a digital scribble with the words “Last night was amazing. Sign” attached to the ebook.

There are so many reasons why an ebook is better than a physical book and why regional restrictions need to be tossed out the window. Who’s with me?

Check out:  The Business Case for E-Readers.

I had heard about Cristang from friends on Facebook and Twitter. “Cristang’s pork burgers are to die for” someone said. “For sure, one of the top three places for burgers in KL” said another. I decided to go taste for myself.

I went there after a meeting at 5pm and they were opening up for dinner time. Being first on the scene gave me the opportunity to chat with Yin – part-time restaurant manager and long-time assistant to Gerald, who owns the place. I told her I came to investigate claims of Cristang having the best pork burgers in town and we started talking. Not long after, Gerald came and we sat down, talking for two whole hours.

I told him I was surprized his name was Gerald and not Cris Tang. “I get that a lot and I’ve had people come in here telling me they are friends of Cris Tang and wants a discount on their bill.” He explained that “Cristang” is a slang that means ‘people of Christian faith’ and is commonly used by the Eurasian community of Portuguese descent to refer to each other.  Portuguese itself is not the correct term to refer to folks like Gerald because he’s not Portuguese and the food he serves isn’t anything you’ll find in Portugal. We’ll call it Portuguese anyways, to keep it short. So, it could be that our Malaysian Portuguese food is the country’s first fusion food if they win the Pie Tie and Pongteh ownership debate with the Nyonya’s (Malaysia assimilated Straits Chinese?).

Gerald is full of wonderful stories. There’s a story behind the restaurant’s famous pork burger called P7 The Urban Legend. I asked how that name came about but first, all the burger names have a P and a number. What that means is the number of pork items in the burger. P1 means one pork item and that’s the pork patty and P2 has two pork items – patty + bacon etc. The P could also mean grilled cajun prawns, petai, chilli pork con carne and pineapple. P7 however, doesn’t have seven pork items but because P1-P6 were taken. The P7 only appeared on the menu a month and a half ago but they have been serving it for over five months like a beta test. It was so good that word got around and people were often heard asking for the P7 like an urban legend.

I figured most of the items on the menu are from recipes passed down through generations of portuguese in his family but the burgers were far from the usual Portuguese fare. “Most of my dishes are accidents in the kitchen” he said, “I love to cook and I’ve never been to chef school so I don’t know my limits and there are no rules to tell me what I can and cannot do with food.” He does have one personal rule though, after one of his dishes become famous, he won’t eat it anymore in case he jinx it. I think this trait is in a lot of artists or perfectionists or both. They always think their best work is yet to come so if he tasted his dish, he might fix something that’s not broken and end up breaking it instead. It’s not like programming, flavor is highly subjective.

Well I had a great time today tasting the legendary P7 and having a wonderful chat with Gerald. The P7 is indeed very delicious. The petai (a strong tasting bean) did not over-power the taste of the pork which was so juicy and tender, it melts in your mouth. I’m a fan of burgers again.

Cristang is at 8 Avenue, Jalan 8/1. Tel: +603.7956.7877. They are opened for lunch and dinner, 6 days a week and closed on Mondays. Highly recommended are of course the P7 Urban Legend Pork Burger, Bacon and Eggs Soup, Bacon Rib Ambila, Tenggiri with Soy Limang and Debal Chicken.

Follow Cristang on Twitter: @cristangrstrnt

Disclosure: I have not received any freebies for writing this article. The only privilege I got was Gerald’s time and the wonderful chat we had.

so-just-where-does-all-that-iphone-money-go

Now let’s look closer to home. Malaysians pay Maxis (the only telco offering the iPhone) US$714 for a 32GB iPhone 3Gs with a 1 year contract. Let’s assume Maxis pays Apple the same $550 per unit, Maxis still makes $164 just from selling you the phone and you pay the entire sum upfront, Maxis doesn’t have to subsidize a thing and they’ll make even more money from your voice and data plan. There is nothing to lose and all to gain for Maxis. Brilliant.

Did you say “This is so unfair. To think I’ve stayed with them all these years, through good reception and no reception and I get jack”? Well, if you’re the only player in the market, the rules are yours to dictate.

Want to pay nothing or close to it for a Maxis iPhone? Their corporate customers get the iPhone for free. So if you know anyone who’s a corporate customer, you can buy it off her for cheap or convince her to give it to you. Keep telling her it’s a bitch to type with a touch screen keypad – this is the bain of many new iphone owners in the first week of playing around with the device. With a hint of urgency in your voice, tell her to get rid of it (and give it to you) before technology becomes obsolete and she has to pay people to take it off her. Check ebay and she’ll see how many unsold first generation iphones there are. If she has no patience for touch screen, she won’t search ebay and will just take your word for it. Score! Congratulations and welcome to the iPhone owners club.

This is a social media aggregator disguised as an elite social media hall of fame. Vocanic Ltd, a company based in Singapore started a social media campaign in search of Malaysia’s top 500 social mediaphiles to take part in a secret project that was revealed yesterday in a “briefing”. I had the invite but I had better things to do on a Sunday afternoon.

With an eye on twitter I watched the briefing unfold. It became clear that this was a cheap stunt to collect data from unsuspecting social media users.  The company had little clue how to develop a service and now they need the 500 people to give it some direction. Or maybe this was another disguise because what they were really after was user information. There must have been more than 500 people who have given their information in the 6-page registration process.

I’m especially disappointed at being misled into a beta testing program and having to fill 6 pages with personal information that the developer couldn’t even use to create a service that’s half decent and launch-worthy. Then again, the 6 pages of questions were so badly structured, flawed and irrelevant, I’d be amazed that any meaningful data can be extracted to help an application developer. Just take a look at the pages I’ve screen capped.

I am ever happy to beta test new apps and volunteer feedback if a developer makes it clear that this is an invitation to a beta test. And if it’s a beta test, don’t collect personal information that has little relevance to product development.

So would I be willing to participate in this further? No. This is now Project DELETE.

If you were watching twitter this week, you would have been inundated with tweets on the Youth Engagement Summit 2009 (#YES2009), Barcamp Melaka and Singapore, a statement from the Deputy Education Minister saying English at work is weird and Cadraver’s story on “Malaysian Telcos to bear Code-of-Arms”.

I caught Mahyuni’s tweet on  Cadraver’s story which was particularly interesting. He wrote a parody on the Malaysian government who’s now requiring telcos to develop their coat-of-arms and they must be prominently displayed everywhere their brands have a presence. Brand logo? What’s that? Coat-of-arms or else. Read Cadraver’s piece here.

When the news started spreading on twitter this week, DiGi was quick to pick up on it, launching a “request-for-proposal” or a contest for DiGi’s code-of-arms. They will be giving away 5 musical mugs to the top 5 designs. I thought they were joking and I went to ask @digi_telco for the contest rules and was told there were none – not even a deadline. It’s anything goes. LOL. So here are my submissions.

Fantastic move on DiGi’s part. Here’s one brand that is not only paying attention to what’s going on in social media but participating and having some fun with the community as well.

Note: I’m not paid or have been paid by DiGi in any way or form to say this.

Here’s what I liked:

1. Shorter URL. Instead of www.rhbbank.com.my I can now type rhb.com.my.
2. First question the site asked was “Consumer” or “Business”. Great, just show me what I want to see and kill the rest.
3. It finally works on Firefox.

Unfortunately, the joy lasted for one screen. Now the nightmare:

See the menu bar? Look harder.

• Dear RHB, if your site is down for maintenance, please take it down. Go back to the old system or put up a message to tell customers the site is under maintenance and have an idea when it will be up again. Your customers can be reasonable if they’re not kept in the dark.
• It’s also a good idea to keep Friday trouble-free. If you launch something new during the week, when you run into trouble and still can’t fix it by Thursday, have a plan b, like switch back to the old and familiar.
• Let your customers know what to expect before you change something as important as your internet banking site. A sudden change like this can reduce trust and confidence in your bank.
• I also hope you got rid of that tedious security feature customers have to go through to edit information in their account. You have no idea how painful it is to wait for an sms PIN and then trying to enter a ridiculous, finger-twisting, series of numbers from a card that has to be physically picked up from the bank first.  The sms PIN request doesn’t even work half the time. Securing transactions online should be the bank’s job, not the customers’.

Online Banking with RHB wasn’t as simple or convenient as you say it is. Hope to see some real improvements from the new site, I guess by Monday.

Innovation is a topic close to my heart. I’ve known, seen or met Malaysians who are innovators and are doing great work outside of Malaysia. I often wonder why they don’t do it here instead and I’ve been told that this country hasn’t encouraged innovation. There are no tax breaks or government support for R&D.

When I was invited to attend MSC’s 12th International Advisory Panel (IAP) Learning Symposium earlier this week, I was excited. The theme for this year was on innovation. Will we finally see the government doing something to promote innovation in Malaysia?

There were two half day tracks running simultaneously. Each track had a panel of speakers with solid track records and experience in driving innovation in education or in business. These gentlemen were also brought together by MSC to be on the advisory board to influence policies that could help the country reach its goals.

The business track, which I attended had on the panel Datuk Seri Dr. Maximus Johnity Ongkili, Minister of Science, Technology and Innovation (I only just found out that we now have a minister of innovation); Dr. Ya-Qin Zhang, Corporate Vice President of Microsoft Corporation and President of Microsoft China Research; Christopher Forbes, Vice Chairman of Forbes Publishing Co.; and Dr. John Gage, Partner at Kleiner Perkins, Caulfield & Byers, also formerly of Sun Microsystems.

For a detailed account on what each speaker talked about, head over to  Hillary Chan’s write up on CNET Asia. Hillary highlighted an interesting observation. There wasn’t a single Malaysian on that panel. Oh wait, they are all in jail according to Datuk Ongkili. I also noticed there wasn’t a single woman on that panel. Is there no room for women in a knowledge-based economy?

To me, the panelist did not tackle the challenges ahead as clearly as I thought they would. With all due respect, Dr. Zhang presented Microsoft’s roadmap and stressed on their $3 billion R&D commitment outside of the US with a list of cities where research centers are set up. Malaysia is not on that list and there are no short, medium or long term plans to include this country in that roadmap. Datuk Ongkili believes Malaysia isn’t lacking innovators and a lot of them are in prison. With that kind of statistics, we should maybe refocus on prison sourcing next year? Chris Forbes (funny guy, I like him) thinks taking a printed magazine online is innovation but it’s not, that’s evolution. The New York Times is innovating printed news delivery online. Finally we have John Gage (I like him too) who talked about innovating to bring more happiness to the world. People want to buy happy. I like where Gage was heading with that idea. Even if I’m jobless, I guess I would like to be happily jobless. Gage paints a utopia that technology can play a part to bridge the gap but again, little to hold on to as to how we can get from zero to hero.

I was hoping to hear more concrete plans or plans with more common sense. A gentleman I spoke to after the conference told me how Malaysian innovators are not being heard. Instead of an online repository for ideas like myideas.my how about a forum for innovators to post their feedback and opinions? Is the government even interested to hear and fix their pain points? How does an international advisory panel know what to fix or how to help? There is also a lack of recognition for innovation. Could the media have offered some help with a regular column or TV program highlighting innovation in Malaysia? How about an annual Innovation Award?

How about improving our broadband infrastructure? The price companies have to pay for larger pipes is incredible. Surely faster speeds can work in tandem with the government’s efforts in increasing broadband penetration in the country. Why must everyone wait for penetration to reach its target before we can see faster connections? People are increasingly mobile – John Gage also mentioned this. Can the government encourage telcos to eliminate the 2-3GB caps on mobile data plans?  This cap does not help knowledge workers one bit.

So the people have been asked to innovate and pick up speed to compete with the world but is anything being done about the speed bumps all over this roadmap (or lack of one) to an innovation and knowledge-based economy?

Personally, I see twitter lists as another ego stroker. You know it is when people start thanking each other for adding them to a list or getting upset when they have been left out of a list and proceed to block, unfollow or both, the list curator.

I curated a list of Malaysians in Social Media for Listorious.com yesterday which I deleted today because it’s just not worth the emotional hassle. Some names are obviously left out because I don’t have every social media person on my follow list. Even if I did, I don’t count having 18K followers or someone who does not engage with others as being in or having a huge influence in social media.

Ego “twisting” aside for personal lists, there are great reasons for brands to curate their own lists.

Here’s my short list:
1. A brand can show what’s important to them with a list of tweeps they follow. It’s like Tony Hsieh’s alltop page where you’ll find blogs on customer service, lifestyle, fashion, shoes and tech. Knowing what Tony has accomplished in zappos, I want to read what he reads too.

2. I agree with point #5 on this list. Gives brands an opportunity to aggregate multiple accounts. Some brands have different names for different departments. Sometimes I wonder why. Customers want one website, one phone number and one email to reach a company.

Sometimes it works. If different twitter accounts are already established, a twitter list with all the brand’s accounts will help a lot. A great example is how AMC promotes the tv series Mad Men on twitter. Twitter accounts are set up for some of the main characters. One to check out is Betty Draper’s (a character in that show) twitter account. On her profile is a list of the other Mad Men characters which she has listed in her rolodex. It’s incredibly fun to read if you’re a fan of Mad Men like me. Betty also has a list of other people she finds interesting and she has them listed in Mad Men of the future (today’s mad men and women).

3. A brand’s staff/member list can also tell others who work or belong to that organization. Especially useful when someone in your organization deals with other people representing your company. When @xyz representing a publication asks me for an interview for example, I’d like to know if they are legit. Seeing their name listed on the staff list of the publication’s (account verified) twitter account gives me some confidence that he or she isn’t a competitor who just wants to get information on a new product I’ve released to the press that’s under embargo. Good example is the New York Times staff list.

Only three from me. There’s more from the many articles written by twitter pundits which you can do a search on. Final note, if you manage a brand or an organization on twitter, do get your list up soon.